Japan's territorial spat with China has produced a windfall for the Japanese Coast Guard. The cabinet of Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda on Friday approved an accelerated plan to outfit the Coast Guard with ¥17 billion worth of new boats, helicopters and equipment.

Those purchases were originally supposed to be included in a budget request for the next fiscal year, starting in March 2013. Instead, the budget for the new ships was slipped into monies disbursed at the end of this year as part of a ¥433.6 billion economic stimulus plan -- meaning the Coast Guard should be able to get its vessels a year early.

The money represents the largest such disbursement of special funds ever for the Coast Guard, and the first to be set aside specifically for territorial water patrol, Shuji Kondo, an official in the Coast Guard's Budget Office, told JRT.

Recent “changes in the situation regarding territorial water patrol” made the accelerated timetable necessary, Mr. Kondo said. Although Mr. Kondo declined to specify exactly what he was talking about, JRT readers will have no trouble connecting the dots to the squabbling over a group of islands in the East China Sea controlled by Japan, which calls them Senkaku, but claimed by China, which names them Diaoyu.

That territorial dispute has been worsening since September, when the Japanese government bought three of the islands from a private owner, provoking strong protests from China. Ever since, Chinese fishing boats and patrol ships have been cruising through nearby waters with increasing frequency, sending the Coast Guard scrambling to keep track of what's going on.

The problem is that Japan's Coast Guard's fleet is too small and old to handle the incursions.

To effectively monitor the area around the disputed islands, ships must be able to operate smoothly even under harsh weather conditions and support helicopter operations, said Mr. Kondo. They also should be speedy and have big operations rooms, he said. Currently, however, there are so few ships that qualify that the Coast Guard has had to send ships from all over Japan to the Okinawa region nearest the disputed islands, Mr. Kondo said.

What's more, the ships currently patrolling the disputed islands were built in the late 1970s to early 1980s, and lack the speed and technological instruments to be effective, Mr. Kondo said.

The bulk of the money approved Friday will be used to purchase four 1,000-ton patrol vessels, three 30-meter long patrol boats, and three helicopters, as well as finish up a 350-ton patrol vessel. Some ¥2.1 billion will be used for equipment such as digital image transmission systems -- gear that allows helicopters to transmit images to headquarters.

These purchases are part of a plan to replace old vessels and “build up a stronger class of players,” Mr. Kondo said. Although the new vessels may be assigned to different parts of Japan, “there is no question they will be dispatched to the Senkaku area” and will contribute to the facilitation of a smoother and larger-scale patrol system, he said. The 1,000-ton patrol vessels are expected to be completed by the end of 2014, the 30-meter patrol boats by the end of next year, and the helicopters by September 2015.